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TJ Klune reveals why Bones Beneath My Skin needed a gay sex scene

TJ Klune reveals why Bones Beneath My Skin needed a gay sex scene

TJ Klune reveals why Bones Beneath My Skin needed a gay sex scene
Courtesy Tor Publishing Group

(L-R) Cover artwork of 'The Bones Beneath My Skin' novel; TJ Klune

"What's something that you never get to see in action thrillers? Queer people having sex," the author tells Out.

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Sex, cults, aliens, and a road trip through the Midwest while on the run from the government... and TJ Klune's newest novel has it all!

Well, it's not exactly new. The New York Times and USA Today bestselling, Lambda Literary Award-winning author's upcoming book, The Bones Beneath My Skin, was self-published by Klune in 2018 after his publisher at the time panned it as "weird." Understanding that as code for too, well, queer, Klune put the story out into the world on his own terms.

Seven years later, the story is about to see a new life with a new publisher, and Klune's "weird" book is the otherworldly queer thriller we didn't know we needed.

Out caught up with the writer to chat about crafting a queer nuclear family we can all root for, THAT pearl-clutching sex scene, how representation can change lives, and how the trans community inspired his most recent bestselling novel, Somewhere Beyond the Sea.

My first question after reading The Bones Beneath My Skin is what do you have against vegans?

Klune: There is a vegan in my life, or I should say used to be in my life where their entire personality was veganism. Everything was about being vegan. Everybody should be vegan. Don't you know that you're hurting the world by not being vegan? So I have to poke fun every now and then when I can, just because it was funny.

Why do you love to write these grand Oddessy adventures?

When I was a kid, I never got to see queer people do stuff like that in books. I never got to see people like me going on adventures being the hero, being the villains. If we were in books, we were the over-the-top offensive stereotype sidekick or we were there to teach the straight characters a very valuable lesson, to get sick, to get hurt, to get killed, to do whatever.

I grew up in a very rural part of Oregon, and the Douglas County library is the library that I went to almost every day as a kid. It literally saved my life. My librarian was the first person I came out to at age 16. And so she gave me the first book with queer people in it that I'd ever read. And that was Patricia Nell Warren's, The Front Runner. This was a book written in the seventies. Patricia Nell Warren was a straight white woman, and this book is considered the first commercial and critical success of a "gay novel." And of course, to spoil a 50-year-old book, at the very end of the book, Harlan is training Billy as a collegiate runner to be in the Olympics, and their relationship blossoms from there. At the very end, Billy is murdered while he is running in the Olympics. He's assassinated essentially, and that's the end of the book.

I remember thinking, ok, here are queer people in the book, and yet they died to tell the story. When my first book came out in 2011, Miss Nell Warren was still alive and she reached out to me after she'd read it to tell me how much she enjoyed it. So, of course, I fangirled all over her, and I told her The Front Runner was the first book with gay people that I ever read, and I'll never forget how she responded. She said, "I am so sorry." I remember thinking, "Oh, I get why she's apologizing. I understand.

What's so funny about that is that to this day, The Front Runner is one of those seminal works of my life. I have a signed first edition sitting on my shelf. Before Miss Warren passed away, I got to know her, I got to know her as an individual, as a writer, and I got to tell her it's because of you that I want to put queer joy in books. I'm not saying that I'm doing it against her or saying what she did was incorrect, but it inspired me to want to have queer people be front and center of their own stories, getting to have the adventures that every other character seems to get to have.

I know that even though we're in 2024 now, there are still kids and young people who live in rural areas who don't have the access that some other people might have. If I can give them a story where they can see themselves and give them a little bit of hope while also entertaining them, then I've done my job.

The best young adult that came out in the 2000s is Alex Sanchez. He wrote the Rainbow High trilogy which dealt with things like HIV and AIDS and homophobia. I read that as a 19-year-old, and it was extraordinary and life-changing because here were queer people going through queer things and they, yes, there was some pain, and yes, there was some suffering. But it wasn't anything to do with necessarily outside forces. It was them growing up and feeling the pain and experience of being young and growing up.

I also wanted to ask about grief. I think it's very prominent in all of your adult stories. Why's it so central to so many of your books?

You know, I can't say that my life has been affected by death more than anybody else because that wouldn't be fair. I don't know anyone else's journey, but I lost my father when I was five years old. I lost my grandfather, who I came to depend on a year later. Three of my uncles died when I was a kid in various accidents. My partner, who I adored beyond measure,e passed away in 2016. It has been this all-consuming thing to explore grief, particularly after losing Eric.

I wrote Under the Whispering Door because I wanted to explore what grief does to people. If you live long enough to know what love is, you'll know loss at some point in your life. Grief affects everyone. No two people experience grief the same way. It's interesting to me that something so universal is still so individualistic.

When I wanted to write about grief, when I wanted to write Under the Whispering Door, I wanted to understand why that was. I obviously did not get any of the answers I was looking for, but I did feel a semblance of peace. Losing the people that I have, especially losing Eric in 2016, absolutely recontextualized my feelings about death. I am not afraid of death. I am not afraid of dying anymore. I understand that it happens to everyone. The moment you're born is the moment you begin to die because your time is on a clock. So I recontextualized my feelings of death and, and what it means. If I can not necessarily find comfort in that but an understanding, and if I can help other people achieve that understanding, then that's something important to me because grief, like discussing sex and like discussing money is taboo. It's something that we don't like to talk about, and why would we, it's something that focuses on something that we lost. And grief doesn't always have to come from death. There are big deaths and there are little deaths. Whether that be loss of friendship opportunities, relationships, jobs, or whatnot. We all have little griefs, little deaths, and big deaths that we have to focus on. Sometimes I don't think we know the difference between the two. I want to understand why grief does what it does while also giving myself a little bit of comfort.

Under the Whispering Door was catharsis. That was catharsis in book form for me. It was important, especially in that book that I did not say what happens next. What happens after we go? Because I don't know, nobody knows. I'm not a religious person by any stretch of the imagination, I'm probably fervently anti-religion, but I will never begrudge people for their faith. If you have something that you believe in a higher power and that brings you, that brings you calm, that brings you joy, that brings you solace, then go for it as long as that life, those words, those beliefs are not encroaching on my life, and you are not trying to change who you are. That's the thing I don't like about religion is that it seems like so many people are trying to change others to fit into their worldview. Whereas the people who let their faith guide them and still attempt to be a good person. That's the type of people that I, I'm ok with it, with their religion. And I don't know, it's just to show, to show what have, what would have been on the other side of that door would have felt like taking away from everybody's faith because nobody knows and everybody believes different things.

So I never wanted to show what was on the other side of the door because, frankly, I don't know, I just wanted to get to the moment where people get to that point and then let them decide what happens next. I think that's important, especially when talking about grief, because again, no, two people experience grief the same way. One size does not fit all. You have to be able to understand that people from all walks of life are coming into any book you write, and they may not understand or relate, but you can give them different ideas about how things can work.

I had a dad come to one of my tour stops with a copy of In the Lives of Puppets. His daughter had given it to him to help explain her asexuality, and he wanted to get this book signed for her because this book helped him understand his daughter better. At the end of the day, that's the coolest thing in the world. That is the best thing in the world to be able to do that, to be able to give people tools to have conversations that they might not have been able to have before.

That's beautiful. I sobbed at the end of Under the Whispering Door.

It's so funny about that ending. I've gotten more flak about that ending than I think I've gotten for any other book. But what's so funny is I have people coming up to my face, when I go out into the world saying I did not like how you ended this. All I have to do is tell them I wrote the ending I never got to have, and holy hell, do they shut up right when I say that.

But it's true. I wrote that because that was the ending I never got to have. In fiction, anything is possible you can do what you want. That's the point.

I have to ask you about the sex scene in Bones Beneath My Skin. It's quite steamy, steamier than the scenes in your previous books. Why this novel?

I've written sex before, like the Green Creek series; there's even sex in my YA series. The point was, I don't want to say instructional, but that was more in the lines of young readers looking at this saying, OK, this is how I can be safe. This is the best practice. This is what we can do. It's gonna be awkward, messy, gross, and everything. But you know what? That's OK.

With this, with The Bones Beneath My Skin, I'm an ace man. Sex, in particular, doesn't really hold any interest for me. But in writing books, there are certain books that I feel a sex scene isn't necessary to cement a relationship but to show that these are two adults in an adult situation, doing adult things. If you need a sex scene to believe that two characters have feelings for each other, then I failed at my job. If you look at House in the Cerulean Sea, or Under the Whispering Door, or In the Lives of Puppets, those books don't have sex in them, but you still believe the characters are together. You still believe that the characters have found something in each other.

With The Bones Beneath My Skin, I'm going to be perfectly honest, I wanted to write a queer action movie, a queer action thriller. What's something that you never get to see in action thrillers? Queer people having sex. You never go to a big action movie like Mission Impossible and think, this is so good with all the straightness and all the heterosexuality. This is wonderful. You run Tom Cruise, you run. But what about us in the audience are like, where's the gayness? Where are the explosions and helicopters and evil cults? All of this is happening, but why aren't they boning? I wanted to write that.

Can you talk about those challenges you felt earlier in your career with this book?

This book originally came out in 2018 at a time of great upheaval on my end. I had been with an indie publisher since 2011. They had published my first book and they had published many of my books since that point. I started to feel the way the winds were blowing with this publisher. I'd submitted The Bones Beneath My Skin to them, and they were like, "yeah, let's publish this."

Then I got privy to information that I probably wasn't supposed to hear from my editor, who told me that she had been told by the publisher that TJ Klune has a new book, and it's "very weird." I remember getting that word and having PTSD flashbacks from being a kid again, and my weirdness was a thing that made me a target. Aside from my queerness, I was the weird kid. As a kid, people changed my last name from Klune to Clown.

To hear that coming from people who supposedly had my back in publishing my book really struck me the wrong way. In addition to that, they also said that they didn't necessarily consider this book a "romance" because there was only one sex scene in the book. Keep in mind this is from a publisher that had just recently published my first asexual book, How to Be a Normal Person. That book had no sex scene, it was about two asexuals coming together. I said, "That book didn't have sex in it. Are you saying that that's not a romance because Ace people can't?"

Oh, they backtracked like a motherf--ker. They were like, "Oh, no, no, no, no, no, that's not what we meant." So I decided to do something different and pull it from the publisher and publish it on my own. What I did not know at the time and would find out within a few weeks was that the publisher had been embezzling royalties from their authors, their editors, and their cover artists.

When I self-published The Bones Beneath my Skin, I also pulled every single book that I'd written from the previous publisher and was self-publishing all those at the same time, 21 books at the same time. On top of that, I had just signed with McMillan and Tor for The House in the Cerulean Sea. So at one time, my past life was collapsing, my new life was rising up, and here I was in the middle trying to figure everything out.

So I self-published The Bones Beneath My Skin, but it got lost in all of the noise of me self-publishing every single book I've ever written. This publisher, very publicly in freefall. When Tor and McMillan came to me right before The House in the Cerulean Sea was published, they said, "Hey, we see you have a bunch of backlist. Can we buy your entire back catalog?"

I said, "No, I don't want to do that. I don't trust publishers at the moment. But hey, what about the Green Creek series? And I have this stand-alone book that is very weird and very strange and very to me, very wonderful. It's called The Bones Beneath My Skin. Would you consider that one?"

They said, "Absolutely, yes."

And here we are four years later, we're getting ready to re-release The Bones Beneath My Skin. I am so excited because this is one of my favorite books I've ever written. It is something different. It shows readers that I am not just The House in the Cerulean Sea or Under the Whispering Door and In the Lives of Puppets, I want to do many different things. I have so many different ideas and this is just one of them. That's why I'm so excited for people to be able to get this book to see that I can do other things. I want to prove to myself and I want to prove to other people that I am much more than The House in the Cerulean Sea.

That book's sequel,Somewhere Beyond the Sea, came out in September. What inspired this story? Did you plan to write it when you wrote the original?

No. The House in the Cerulean Sea, Under the Whispering Door, and In the Lives of Puppets were all written before 2020. I was getting tired of sequels, so I envisioned them as three stand-alone stories interconnected by theme. I called them my unofficial kindness trilogy. The House in the Cerulean Sea was about kindness to others, Under the Whispering Door is about kindness to yourself. In the Lives of Puppets was about kindness to those who may not deserve your kindness or your forgiveness. I didn't want to do anything more with those.

However, if you recall, at the very end of The House in the Cerulean Sea, Arthur is invited to come testify in front of the government about his experiences going through the system. In 2021, the United States government invited trans people to come and testify in front of the government. They invited parents and guardians of trans youth, and they invited medical professionals who provide gender-affirming care. But what nobody knew at the time was that it was essentially an ambush.

These amazing people got there to speak their truth and the politicians there questioned their bodies, their minds, their rights to exist. They accused parents and guardians of trans youth of indoctrinating their children. I remember being absolutely horrified by that. These are people who we voted into office, we are their constituents. I remember being absolutely disgusted by that response.

So what did I do? I got in touch with a few people involved in the testifying in, in, in there. And I asked them all specific questions about their experience, what it was like being there. But there was one question that I kept uniform across. I asked them knowing what the reception was going to be, would you do it all over again if you had to? Every single one of them said unequivocally yes.

Why? Because they got to speak their truth. Regardless of the response they received, they still got to speak their truth. Parents and guardians got to speak up for their children. Medical professionals got to show why they are the medical professionals, and the politicians are not. I have never felt more disgusted but also proud of these people for doing what they did.

So this idea blossomed in my head then because I remembered Arthur was invited to testify. What if that turned out to be the same thing? What if it was an ambush? And that scene comes early in the book. But it's a centerpiece scene that I spent weeks agonizing over trying to get it. Exactly right, because it was the focal point of the book and the reason I was writing this story. I wrote Somewhere Beyond the Sea for the trans community.

It is necessary for someone in the science fiction and fantasy space who has a platform like I do to speak out against people like JK Rowling, who spends her life punching down on one of the most vulnerable, marginalized communities in the world. The trans suicide rates in this country are through the roof. As a matter of fact, Nature Magazine released a study of over the past five or six years, I believe where they went to each state that has enacted newly anti-trans legislation, and the study through a focus group found that in these 19 states, the attempts of suicide under the age of people under the age of 25 has shot up to 78% in those states.

My community is not just gay men, my community is LGBTQIA, that is every single one of them. And if we're not speaking up for one, we're gonna break apart. There is no queer community without the trans community. The trans community has always been here. They will always be here. As a matter of fact, so many trans people fought for the rights that queer people enjoy today, even though it feels like we're going backward in many respects, we would not be here without the trans community. The fact that so many people seem to be willing to punch down on them, even though they're one of the most vulnerable groups in the world, doesn't sit right with me. If I have this platform, I need to use it, I can't have this platform to just tell stories, especially when so many people with a platform like mine are using it to hurt others. I might as well speak up for my community. So that's why I wrote Somewhere Beyond the Sea, for my trans brothers and sisters.

I feel so inspired by you and your stories.

How often is it that a fat Fussy queer man in his forties gets to be the hero of a story. It never happens. The fact that I can put Linus Baker front and center and give him hope and joy and a home is so important. Young queer people grow up to be older queer people. Just because you're "not young anymore" doesn't mean your life stops. Life doesn't stop when you come out the first time. Life doesn't stop if you find a boyfriend or a partner or a girlfriend. Life doesn't stop, you continue. Why can't people in their forties and fifties and sixties get to have the same type of adventures that younger people always seem to get?

Last question. I'm not going to ask you to pick a favorite book of yours but I wondered if you had a favorite character that you loved writing?

If you've listened to The House in the Cerulean Sea or Somewhere Beyond the Sea on audio, you'll know that Daniel Henning is the narrator. He has 30 years of theater experience, so of course, he's gonna be very theatrical.

There's one character from those books, his name is Chauncey, has always been in my head who has always never stopped talking, who always wants to be heard. But it's not the voice that I created for him. It's Daniel Henning's narration for Chauncey in my head. If you hear that, you'll be like, "oh my God, how does TJ survive with that voice in his head all the time?"

But it is. Chauncey is my favorite. Chauncey is a representation of the innocence of youth where in his case, he found something that fascinates him so much that it became his entire personality. He wanted to be a bellhop. When I was a kid, I watched Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom for the first time and I wanted two things to be an archaeologist and Doctor Jones to be my boyfriend. That's what I wanted. But archaeology became my entire personality because of that. And I remember what that felt like as a kid. And so getting to have Chauncey with his unorthodox appearance who has this can-do attitude that never falters, wanting to do something that is so front-facing that a lot of people wouldn't like him in, but he still does it anyways. That is the tenacity and the power of youth is that they don't know well enough to say to stop. They keep on going because it's what they want.

Those characters aren't real but they are very real to me. Those kids are very real to me, and I am very protective of them. Chauncey will probably always be one of my favorite characters I've ever written because he never shuts up.

The Bones Beneath My Skin is now available for sale on tjklunebooks.com.

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